[The First Day of Destruction][Inner Sanctum: The Eye of the Water God]
To reveal the specific name of a summoned entity to one's enemy is, in a tactical sense, the height of folly. It is giving away intelligence for free, allowing the opponent to deduce resistances, weaknesses, and skill sets.
However, Deputy High Priestess Shannon O. Vian did it intentionally.
It was a gamble born of desperation. She hoped that the majestic title of "Cherubim Gatekeeper,
And indeed, the effects were immediate.
The was a tank-class angel. Its passive aura, [Sanctuary of the Silver City]
But this miracle came at a horrific price.
The [Seventh Trumpet of Heaven]
Shannon knew this. The priests collapsing in the water knew this.
Yet, they chanted without hesitation.
Shannon smiled, a grim, skeletal expression on her aged face.
Her only regret was that the enemy standing before them was merely a subordinate. If they had forced the Sorcerer King himself to retreat, the sacrifice would have been legendary.
Shannon realized, her eyes darting to the Miko Princesses.
To maintain a Cherubim-class summon safely, five Miko Princesses were required to share the mana burden. There were only three left. Their petite bodies swayed in the water like dying reeds in a gale, blood already trickling from their noses.
Shannon hardened her heart. She glared at the Eternal Death, who was perched nonchalantly on the balcony railing.
"Listen, servant of the Sorcerer King!" she shouted, her voice amplified by the angel's aura. "If you retreat now, we shall overlook your trespass into this holy domain. Leave, and take your life with you!"
The Eternal Death tilted its skull. The purple flames in its eyes flickered.
"A retreat?" The creature’s voice was dry, amused. "Yes... Engaging a Level 80 tank with high holy resistance would be a time-consuming annoyance. It would be inefficient."
"Then…"
"However," the Undead interrupted, "efficiency is not my only directive. My orders are absolute."
Before Shannon could process the shift in tone, a sudden displacement of air screamed through the sanctum.
"Look out!"
Clemence’s roar came a split-second too late. He was the only one in the room whose senses could even hope to track the movement.
It happened with the cold, mechanical speed of a bullet.
A chain, wrapped tightly around the Eternal Death’s right arm, shot out like a striking python. It was a high-tier projectile attack, designed to bypass armor and flesh alike.
It crossed the distance between the balcony and the pool in an instant, slicing the surface of the water, and…
The sound was wet. Like a ripe melon being dropped from a tower onto the pavement.
Shannon felt warm liquid splatter across her cheek. She blinked, her brain struggling to reconcile the sudden intrusion of gore into the holy space.
She turned her head mechanically.
Beside her, the youngest Miko Princess, the Fire Miko
Or rather, her head was gone.
The chain had impacted her skull directly. There was no resistance. The bone, brain matter, and blood had vaporized into a fine red mist. Her headless, petite body stood frozen for a horrifying second, then swayed and collapsed into the water, twitching violently like a fish out of water.
The pool, consecrated to purity, bloomed into a giant red lotus.
"Ah..." Shannon's heart skipped a beat. She stared at the headless corpse, her mind blank.
The blood-stained chain retracted with the same terrifying speed, snapping back into place around the Undead's torso.
"So," the Eternal Death rasped, "it is far easier to kill the summoner than the summon."
The creature paused, tilting its head again.
"Hmm? The angel remains? Do these rituals allow for mana sharing even after death? Or perhaps the connection lingers..."
Clemence and Valerius didn't wait for it to finish.
"You bastard!" Clemence roared, abandoning all defense.
He leaped, his spear aimed directly at the creature's chest. Valerius flanked, swinging his greatsword. But the Eternal Death dodged Clemence with a casual sidestep and parried Valerius’s strike, slicing the paladin's arm and leg off in a blur of motion.
"Shannon! Do it now!" Clemence screamed, his voice raw.
Shannon snapped out of her shock. A sob caught in her throat, but she swallowed it down.
"Unleash the Divine Retribution!" she commanded.
The remaining two Miko Princesses, the Water and Light Mikos, didn't flinch. Their eyes were glazed over, their minds lost in the ritual trance. Even as their companion died beside them, they obeyed the command.
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The Cherubim Gatekeeper
The air within the sanctum grew unnaturally heavy, thick with the suffocating density of pure, wrathful divinity. The Cherubim Gatekeeper
The world seemed to hold its breath.
[Skill: Roar of Divinity]
Heaven shattered. A beam of concentrated holy energy erupted from the angel's throat, transforming the very air into a tempest of blinding white fury. It wasn't merely light; it was sound, atmospheric pressure, the judgment made manifest. The roar shook the foundations of the earth, instantly disintegrating the ancient stone pillars and blowing away half of the sanctum's vaulted roof in a tempest of holy fire.
For the pure of heart, it was a miraculous balm. The devastating shockwave bathed them in warmth. Valerius’s severed limbs regenerated in a flash of silver light, bone knitting to muscle in an instant. Clemence’s deep lacerations healed without scarring, and the bone-deep fatigue that had plagued the surviving holy knights vanished, replaced by surging vitality.
But for the unholy, it was sheer annihilation.
The Eternal Death was swallowed whole by the white inferno. The concussive blast threw the skeletal monstrosity backward with the force of a falling meteor, slamming it into the jagged ruins of the destroyed balcony.
Swirling dust and the crackle of holy fire filled the devastated chamber.
"Did... did we get it?" a bleeding priest whispered, desperate hope battling the suffocating terror in his voice. "Even an Undead cannot survive a direct hit from a Cherubim's ultimate skill!"
Deputy High Priestess Shannon held her breath, her heart hammering wildly against her ribs as she watched the smoke begin to clear.
Then, the blood froze in her veins.
From the smoldering crater of rubble, a slender figure rose unhurriedly. It raised a skeletal hand and nonchalantly dusted off its tattered, obsidian robes.
It was unharmed.
There were faint, glowing burns etching its skeletal frame, but even as Shannon watched, the holy fire sizzled out, the blackened bone mending itself. She stared in mounting horror at the enemy
"Impressive," the Eternal Death murmured. "Massive holy elemental damage paired with a secondary sonic component. Quite potent against lower-tier undead. However..."
It stepped gracefully out of the smoke, the twin abyssal flames in its eye sockets flaring with a sinister, purple light.
"...against me, it is merely annoying. And a skill of that magnitude possesses a significant cooldown, does it not?"
The last remnants of color drained from Shannon’s face.
This was no mindless undead. It understood the underlying mechanics of their world better than they did.
"Gods above... how do we fight this?" Shannon whispered, her voice trembling so violently she could barely form the words. "How can we possibly win?"
Panic rising, she looked back toward the sacred pool at the remaining Miko Princesses. They were pale as ash, their bodies trembling uncontrollably. Crimson tears were weeping from their tightly shut eyes. The sheer metaphysical strain of maintaining a Level 80
They had five minutes at most before their bodies gave out.
"I see," the Eternal Death mused, its gaze locking onto the trembling girls with predatory interest. "So the ritual distributes the immense mana cost among the casters. Killing just one was insufficient to sever the connection. I must simply be thorough."
"No...!" Shannon gasped, her lungs burning.
The Undead didn't leap this time. It simply dissolved into a wisp of unnatural, inky black smoke.
[Shadow Step]
It rematerialized instantly at the very edge of the blood-tinged pool, a nightmare made flesh. It reached out a skeletal hand toward the Water Miko Princess.
"Stop! The barrier!" Clemence roared, abandoning his defensive stance and throwing himself forward.
"Protect her!" Shannon screamed.
The Cherubim Gatekeeper moved, its massive silver wings sweeping forward to interpose as a shield, but it was agonizingly slow. The Eternal Death was already inside the angel's guard.
"[Skill: Needle Storm]."
The Eternal Death nonchalantly clenched its fist.
It was a massacre in miniature. Thousands of needle-thin blades of dark magic materialized in a tight sphere around the Water Miko. There was no escape; the very air around her became a localized torture device.
The sound was horrific. The young Miko Princess didn't even have the time to draw breath for a scream. Her body was pierced from every conceivable angle simultaneously. Face, torso, limbs, she was instantly transformed into a grotesque, bleeding pincushion.
Fresh blood sprayed outward in a fine crimson mist. The mangled ruin that had been a girl fell backward into the sacred pool with a heavy splash, turning the water completely red.
"Eee-yaaa!!" A nearby priest shrieked.
Shannon clamped her hands over her mouth. The holy pool was no longer a vessel of miracles; it was a
"Ugh... glug..."
Beside the floating carnage, the last remaining conduit, the Light Miko collapsed to her hands and knees.
She was alone now. The astronomical, crushing mana burden of a Level 80 divine summon crashed down entirely upon her singular, fragile soul. It was like trying to funnel an ocean through a straw.
Blood poured in from her ears, nose, and eyes. But it wasn't just blood. It was thick with the dissolved tissue of her own rupturing internal organs. She opened her mouth to scream, to beg for release, but only a horrific slurry of stomach lining and shattered teeth spilled over her lips.
Her small body convulsed once, a violent, arching spasm that broke her own spine, and then she collapsed face-first into the blood-red water.
Dead from sheer magical burnout.
The blinding light of the sanctum vanished in an instant. The Cherubim Gatekeeper
A suffocating, heavy silence returned to the ruined sanctum, broken only by the wet, rhythmic sound of blood dripping from the shattered altar.
And then, the screaming began.
"Ah... AHHH! My skin! It burns!" "High Priestess! The toll! Help me! HELP ME!"
The backlash of the Forbidden Art hit the survivors like a tidal wave of rot. The cosmic debt had to be paid, and the currency was life itself.
In the pool and around the altar, the remaining priests began to violently writhe on the stone floor. Their bodies aged decades in mere seconds before Shannon’s horrified eyes. Youthful, flush skin withered into dry, gray parchment and tore at the joints. Robust muscles completely atrophied, leaving them as living skeletons. Hair turned white and fell out in bloody clumps.
Then, Shannon felt it.
It started as a creeping itch at the base of her spine. She felt her bones becoming as brittle as dry twigs. Her spine, unable to support her weight, began to curl forward, bowing her back in a grotesque hump.
She tried to raise her hands, to cast a simple healing ward, anything, but her fingers were gnarled claws, the skin clinging loosely to the knuckles like melting wax. She was the Deputy High Priestess. She was supposed to protect them. But all she could do was watch her flock turn to dust.
Desperate, she tried to turn her head to find Clemence, the First Seat.
The sickening sound of her own cervical vertebrae snapping echoed loudly within her decaying skull. A spike of paralyzing pain shot down her neck, leaving her head lolling uselessly to the side.
"Clemence..." she rasped.
But her voice was gone. Her vocal cords had snapped. Her tongue had shriveled into a dry, useless lump of flesh in her mouth. Her vision was blurring, the edges of the world turning dark and cold.
Through the fading, tear-filled haze of her failing eyes, she saw him.
The First Seat. Clemence had cleaved his way through the rubble, his holy armor dented and stained. But he wasn't looking at the enemy anymore. He had stopped fighting. He was staring directly at her.
His normally resolute face was completely shattered, his eyes wide with an unspeakable, paralyzing grief. He was watching her, dissolving into a withered husk.
"Deputy High Priestess!" Clemence shouted, his voice raw with despair. He dropped his guard completely, reaching a gauntleted hand out toward her across the ruined distance.
Shannon screamed.
She pushed every ounce of her remaining, fading will into her eyes, trying to warn him, but her body was entirely unresponsive.
Directly behind Clemence, the shadows lengthened unnaturally. The Eternal Death materialized from the darkness, a dagger of pure black obsidian raised high in its skeletal grip.
"Oh dear," the Undead whispered."Getting distracted during a boss fight? That is a rookie mistake."
Shannon watched, utterly helpless, as the black blade sank deep into the back of Clemence’s neck, severing his spine and exploding out through his throat in a shower of brilliant crimson.
The First Seat didn't even have time to gasp. His outstretched hand fell limp, and he crumpled to the stone floor like a puppet with its strings cut.
The darkness finally rushed in to take her. The physical agony of her body dissolving into ash was immense, an ocean of pain, but it was nothing compared to the suffocating despair that crushed her soul.
They had sacrificed everything. The scrying had failed. The angel had fallen. And as her final breath rattled from her decaying lungs, Shannon knew that the last, desperate hope of the Theocracy had just died in a pool of their own blood.
...
Author’s Note
Thank you so much for sticking with me and reading every chapter - I truly appreciate your time and support. If you’ve enjoyed the story, please drop a review : tell me what you liked and what I can improve. Your feedback really helps.
Quick update on scheduling: I’m shortening chapters so I can post more often, aiming for Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday (maybe a fourth update when possible). Shorter, frequent updates should help the novel reach more readers.
I’ve already got about 10–15 chapters drafted. Would anyone be interested in reading advance chapters on another platform? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Thanks again, see you in the next chapter!
Author’s Note
Thank you so much for sticking with me and reading every chapter - I truly appreciate your time and support. If you’ve enjoyed the story, please drop a review : tell me what you liked and what I can improve. Your feedback really helps.
Quick update on scheduling: I’m shortening chapters so I can post more often, aiming for Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday (maybe a fourth update when possible). Shorter, frequent updates should help the novel reach more readers.
I’ve already got about 10–15 chapters drafted. Would anyone be interested in reading advance chapters on another platform? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Thanks again, see you in the next chapter!
